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Tuesday, 9 September 2014

Meet Alex Williams, Founder of Animation Apprentice

Alex Williams by Woody Woodman

Alex Williams founded Animation Apprentice in September 2012, having spent twenty five years working in the
animation industry, and teaching animation at schools and universities including CalArts, Gnomon, Escape Studios, and The Animation Workshop in Denmark. We asked him to talk about what made him want to make the leap from working on production to setting up an online school.

Some of Alex's film credits

What did you do before founding Animation Apprentice?

Alex: I spent twenty five years working on animated films, from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" to "The Lion King", The Iron Giant", and the last three Harry Potter films. I started off as a 2D animator working on hand-drawn films, and in 2003 made the jump into digital animation. I've worked for most of the major studios: Disney, DreamWorks, Sony, Fox, Warner Bros, and lots of visual effects houses such as Digiscope, Digital Dimension, Cinesite and MPC. So, after so many years and so many productions, I have a pretty good understanding of how the industry works.

Design for Patronus Doe, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

What made you want to set up Animation Apprentice?

Alex: I have been teaching animation part-time since 1996 when I first started to teach at CalArts in Los Angeles. Later I taught at Gnomon in Hollywood, The Animation Workshop in Denmark, and Escape Studios in London. I was always doing my teaching around the edges of my work
on production, in fits and starts, so I wanted to see what I could do if
I really committed to it full time.

I love to teach and I want to make Animation Apprentice a global centre for animation
excellence, so that our graduates have the best possible
training, and can go out and have employers competing to hire our best
students. That's a big ambition, but I think we can do it if we really
focus on the important things.

What's special about Animation Apprentice?

The course at Animation Apprentice is a distillation of everything I have learned both on animated film production and also in the
classroom over the years. I don't know many animators who have so much teaching experience; teaching something is not the same as doing it. You need to be able to break it down, create exercises which are both complex and simple at the same time. You have to take complex material and make it achievable for the student.

Animation Aprentice is a 30 week course (plus a free bonus week at the end) which aims to teach
animation from the very basics all the way to sophisticated character
and creature animation. When I created it, I knew I had to set it up because I had the whole course in my head and I just wanted to get it out there - create it, and start teaching it. It was a bit like writing a novel with the story already in place in my head.

The animation and visual effects
industry in the UK has been complaining for years that there are too few
schools in Britain which offer a really thorough animation training on
the level of, say, CalArts in LA or Gobbelins in France. I
wanted to see if we could do something that would aim really
high, and train animators to be ready to work in the animation
industry. Nowadays you can learn just as easily online as in the classroom - and it's a whole lot cheaper.

Animation Apprentice: www.animationapprentice.org

Are you pleased with how it works?

Alex: Very pleased. The beauty of
learning online is this: if you miss a class, or didn't understand
something, you get to go to the online videos and catch up. It means
that no student should ever fall behind, as long as they put in the
hours.